Waiting for work

Thursday

Nov 6, 2008 at 2:00 AM

Temp jobs fill the void for the blue-collar unemployed

By Owen Skoler

It&rsquo;s 6:30 a.m. and 20 men sit inside Labor Ready waiting for work. Many have been there since 5 a.m. when the temporary-staffing agency opened. Although they dream of full-time employment, they know the only thing they can hope for this morning is a handful of hours performing menial tasks for little pay.

Dressed in hooded sweatshirts and scuffed boots, the men sit in plastic chairs and try to kill time. Some talk sports; others discuss the economy. Two testify to how the stress of working multiple part-time jobs is greater than working a single full-time one.

They sip free coffee. They wait.

Occasionally one will step into the cold for a cigarette or wander to the front counter to joke around with the staff.

For a room filled with unemployment and uncertainty, the mood is surprisingly light.

She says part of running the agency means boosting workers&rsquo; morale as much as possible. Parry and her staff know that they could be one paycheck from being &ldquo;on the other end of the counter.&rdquo;

And if they were to find themselves sitting in those plastic chairs, wouldn&rsquo;t they want someone to greet them with a smile?

&ldquo;Awe, you don&rsquo;t mean that honey pie,&rdquo; the joking worker says to her. Parry, a robust, middle-aged woman, tilts her head toward the ceiling and lets out a cackle that fills the room.

Other prospective workers ignore the commotion and continue to wait. If they don&rsquo;t hear their names for another hour, many will call it quits, spend the rest of the day filling out applications and return the next morning with the hope of better luck.

Employment in Worcester has taken a hit in recent months. In September, 1,138 fewer people were employed than in August; 93 more people qualified for unemployment; and the city&rsquo;s labor force shrunk by 1,045. Currently Worcester&rsquo;s unemployment rate stands at 6.7 percent, .7 percent higher than the national average and 1.3 percent greater than where the city was a year ago.

The numbers come from the Massachusetts Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development. Don Anderson, Career Center Director for the Worcester office of Workforce Development, attributes the bleak figures to more highly skilled workers losing their jobs.

&ldquo;There&rsquo;s a larger variety in the backgrounds among the people who have been laid off in the last few months. We&rsquo;re seeing more managers, more people with higher educational levels,&rdquo; Anderson says.

He also points to the city&rsquo;s stalled construction industry as a reason for declining employment.

&ldquo;A lot of folks from construction have come to us in recent months even before Wall Street&rsquo;s recent crisis. Some have had a consistent pattern of employment &hellip; sometimes they&rsquo;re forced to find employment with another employer or find different work while construction trades try to rebound,&rdquo; Anderson says.

At Labor Ready, Parry has seen increases across the board for those seeking temporary employment, but the biggest surprise for the veteran manager has been the substantial number of skilled laborers visiting the West Boylston Street office in recent months. These workers include welders, excavators, electricians and machine operators.

Labor Ready opens before sunrise for those seeking a day's work.While Labor Ready has a sister company, CLP, that specifically handles skilled workers, Parry is finding more and more of these laborers are taking temporary, unskilled jobs to make ends meet.

Earlier this year, Parry&rsquo;s office had about three or four applications from skilled laborers on file. Now the office has 25. She estimates a 30 percent increase of skilled workers seeking temporary employment over the past few months and an 8 percent rise in unskilled workers looking for jobs. For a while, she tried to ignore the numbers and hoped that things weren&rsquo;t as bad as they seemed.

&ldquo;I finally acknowledged the numbers around June,&rdquo; Parry says about a trend that began in March. &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t really want to admit it before then.&rdquo;

Now these former construction workers and machine operators show up at Labor Ready at 5 a.m., hopeful for work. If their names are called, they are sent to jobs that require little experience and pay accordingly, usually around $8 an hour, the state&rsquo;s minimum wage.

Al Bundy lost his job in Rhode Island and recently created his fi rst resume.Glenn Slongwhite is one of these workers. So far he&rsquo;s been lucky. In the past few weeks that he&rsquo;s been coming to Labor Ready, his name has been called more often than not.

&lsquo;I&rsquo;m basically&nbsp;looking at whatever to survive.&rsquo;

Until recently, Glenn Slongwhite worked the same job for 15 years and worked in the same profession for 21. As an excavator specializing in subdivisions, Slongwhite&rsquo;s job included everything from clearing stumps to digging foundations to installing utilities. He worked 56 hours a week for a small, private contractor and earned $1,100 a week before taxes, $57,200 a year.

The nationwide downturn in residential construction has made his excavating experience obsolete, Slongwhite says.

&ldquo;The economy &hellip; it&rsquo;s just gone out from under the table. It just collapsed. There&rsquo;s not much out there, and so many people working excavation are looking for work,&rdquo; he says.

Conditions for construction workers like Slongwhite will probably not improve anytime soon. Last week the U.S. Department of Commerce reported that residential construction fell 19 percent from July to September. Add to this the fact that some economists are saying the country is in a recession that could continue well into 2009, and the chances of Slongwhite making the kind of money he did at his former job seem slim.

&ldquo;Right now anyone who has property who was planning on putting houses up is just not doing it because they can&rsquo;t get money they spend out. They&rsquo;re not going to see [their investment]. It&rsquo;s not worth it to them to put roads in if they&rsquo;re not going to be able to sell houses,&rdquo; the 50-year-old excavator says, ending his sentences with a nervous chuckle.

Unlike many of the recently unemployed, Slongwhite was not laid off from his job. He just stopped getting paid for it.

After two months of being promised on Monday that he would receive a paycheck, only to see that promise reneged on by Friday, he had finally had enough and cut his losses. He knew he wasn&rsquo;t going to be getting a fat check with all his hours in back pay.

Glenn Slongwhite is looking for full-time work for the fi rst time in 15 years.Slongwhite needed immediate cash. He says he drained most of his savings in the two months he was working without pay.

&ldquo;Right now I&rsquo;m basically looking at whatever to survive,&rdquo; he says.

Slongwhite had visited the city&rsquo;s other temporary staffing agencies but didn&rsquo;t have any luck finding work. Plus some of the agencies paid by the week, not by the day like Labor Ready.

Slongwhite says having cash at the end of each day makes his situation a little easier. With his savings gone, he struggles to meet his $600 a week for rent, food, gas and other bills.

&ldquo;It&rsquo;s literally at the point that within a month, I could be not having enough money for rent. I&rsquo;ve picked out a nice bridge under [Route] 146,&rdquo; Slongwhite says followed by a quick laugh.

He&rsquo;s only half joking.

&ldquo;You get kicked out and there are not that many places you can always go,&rdquo; he says.

Without a wife or children, whatever money he makes at Labor Ready is used to support himself.

So far, the agency has been good to him. Since showing up nearly every morning for three weeks, Slongwhite has landed consistent work. He usually gets work at least three days a week but sometimes for only four or five hours a day. On the day he spoke with WoMag, Slongwhite was scheduled to go to Anna Marie College. All he knew was that the job involved cleaning floors and lifting.

Slongwhite&rsquo;s first job through the agency was on a commercial construction site and lasted seven days. Although he only cleaned the site and worked general labor, he says these kinds of jobs are ideal if he is forced to find temporary employment.

&ldquo;In case there are any construction jobs opening up, it&rsquo;s a way to get on the site. Even if I start on the bottom, it&rsquo;s like I know if they have any openings If they&rsquo;re looking for somebody [then] I&rsquo;d be able to get back into a construction job.&rdquo;

If Labor Ready doesn&rsquo;t have any work for him, Slongwhite will spend the day filling out job applications. He says he usually submits three to seven a week.

Selling himself to employers is uncomfortable. Now that he&rsquo;s forced to look outside of the construction industry, he&rsquo;s learning that the interview process is much different than what he is used to.

A man catches a nap while waiting for his name to be called.&ldquo;For most construction jobs, they&rsquo;ll just talk to you, take you out, see what kind of work you do and that you know how to operate the equipment. If they want you then, they&rsquo;ll have you fill out your W-2s. This is the first time I&rsquo;ve had to fill out a job application in 20 years,&rdquo; Slongwhite says.

He&rsquo;s worried about what&rsquo;s going to happen to him.

&ldquo;Psychologically it&rsquo;s hard. I&rsquo;ve never been out of work before.&rdquo;

&lsquo;I got all this experience, and I&rsquo;m stuck.&rsquo;

Other job seekers at temp agencies have different work histories than Glenn. A worker at Job Finders, a Main Street agency that supplies temporary manufacturing work, lost his job driving a bus after an OUI arrest. Another says he&rsquo;s worked through the agency for 10 years because he likes the freedom to quit if someone hassles him on the job. The two men who use Job Finders to get work stand outside the agency on a recent Saturday morning. The business opens at 6 a.m. sharp and usually closes a half-hour later. That&rsquo;s because unlike Labor Ready that asks workers to provide their own ride, Job Finders drives laborers to whichever factory or warehouse is providing the day&rsquo;s job.

Then there&rsquo;s the 21-year-old at Labor Ready who is only looking for low-skilled, part-time work because he lives at home and is able to save on rent.

Al Bundy, however, is more like Slongwhite, a blue-collar worker who desperately wants a full-time job and prides himself on his work ethic.

Bundy has worked through Labor Ready off and on for five years. The key to finding temporary work, he says, is attitude. He knows that it&rsquo;s a buyer&rsquo;s market for labor and that if he doesn&rsquo;t fill an employer&rsquo;s expectations, there&rsquo;s a roomful of others who will.

&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve always maintained a good reputation of being to work on time, doing a good job, always having a clear head. I don&rsquo;t do drugs, drink, smoke,&rdquo; Bundy says.

Five months ago Bundy moved to Worcester from Rhode Island after a linen factory he ran keyboard operations for shut down. He made $10 an hour and worked 40 hours a week.

These days Bundy catches the first bus of the morning at 5 a.m. from Main South to make it to Labor Ready by 5:30 a.m. He usually gets home at 6 p.m.

Almost every job the 43-year-old has worked, he says, he&rsquo;s received a return ticket, which assures at least another day with the same employer.

Job Finders on Main Street is on a bus route, which helps workers get there by 6 a.m. They are then transported to job sites.Recently Bundy has been moving office furniture. Before that he worked in the kitchen at Assumption College. About two times a week, Goodyear asks him to unload tires off trucks.

&ldquo;Right now, I tell you, I feel like there&rsquo;s some type of recession because once I got laid off at my job in Rhode Island, it was like everywhere I looked, even temp services, it was like there was nothing, absolutely nothing. Right now temp services are the best thing happening,&rdquo; Bundy says.

Bundy recently made a resume for the first time.

&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve got to add more to it. I have to get help to shine it up, refine it,&rdquo; he says.

Ideally, Bundy would like to be employed as a full-time painter, specifically a commercial painter. The last painting job he held was a year ago. He&rsquo;s also worked as a roofer, plumber and general construction worker.

&ldquo;That&rsquo;s the thing that shocked me. I got all this experience, and I&rsquo;m stuck,&rdquo; Bundy says.

&lsquo;When it slows down all kinds of people disappear.&rsquo;

Stacey Burke, Director of Public Relations for Labor Ready, says numbers produced by temporary staffing agencies are indicators of the economy&rsquo;s overall health.

&ldquo;When the economy starts to soften, everyone assumes that&rsquo;s when we see businesses pull in temporary workers &hellip; but actually temporary workers are typically the first to be let go,&rdquo; Burke says, explaining that a decrease in temporary jobs indicates the start of an economic downturn.

&ldquo;In the middle of a weak economy, small to midsize businesses turn to temporary staffing to fill positions rather than bringing on permanent employees,&rdquo; Burke says.

&ldquo;Coming out of a weak economy, there is a pickup in temporary workers because businesses will use temporary employees to meet demands but won&rsquo;t bring on full-time employees until they are sure the demand for their products will continue,&rdquo; she says.

Burke says the middle scenario best describes current conditions. Based on testimony of workers from Labor Ready, it seems this could be the case. Workers there report they are able to find employment for at least part of the week.

But at Job Finders, another supplier of temporary work for the city&rsquo;s blue-collared, owner Manager Jerry Gilmartin says he hasn&rsquo;t observed any significant shift in the demand for workers.

&ldquo;It can be really busy in here, but when it slows down all kinds of people disappear,&rdquo; Gilmartin says, referring to the normal ebb and flow of the place.

Bill Murdock, who also manages Job Finders, says that unlike Labor Ready, a national mega-supplier of temporary labor, Job Finders is a local business that&rsquo;s struggled to stay open since the economic downturn. He believes the economy may still be in the beginning of a crisis rather than the middle of one as Burke suggests.

Although hard numbers for October were unavailable by press time, economists have predicted that employment numbers aren&rsquo;t expected to improve any time soon.

According to a Reuters story published last week, October numbers are expected to show that the country lost another 200,000 nonfarm payroll jobs while the national unemployment rate rose to 6.3 percent. The news agency also reported that data from the Institute for Supply Management will reveal that service-sector and manufacturing jobs took a hit in October as well.

The grim numbers make what happened to Glenn Slongwhite that much more surprising.

A week after he first shared his story with us, Slongwhite received a call from an employer who wanted to interview him.

&ldquo;For the first 50 or so [job applications], I never heard back anything, so work [opportunities] must be a little better if I&rsquo;m getting interviews out of them,&rdquo; Slongwhite says.

And it turns out the construction worker will not have to be sleeping under a bridge in the immediate future. His landlord once worked in the residential construction field and relates to Slongwhite&rsquo;s tough times. He&rsquo;s allowing him some leeway with rent until he finds more permanent employment.

After that first call from an employer, three others quickly followed. Slongwhite now has interviews scheduled for maintenance, garage and cleaning work.

&ldquo;It feels a lot better in the sense that maybe within a week or two I could have a full-time job. I feel more confident getting work. I feel like something&rsquo;s going to work out,&rdquo; he says.

But he realizes his story is an exception to the rule.

&ldquo;I know that I&rsquo;m luckier than most people out there,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;To get a full-time job, I mean, everybody needs that.&rdquo;o